Somewhat of a disclaimer: I'm not a customer of CW yet but I'm seriously considering moving to them. I like their thinking about capping/shaping etc., as I, probably like many others, want an account that always feels fast for browsing and streaming, yet also want to be able to download lots of data but am less concerned if that isn't always running at line speed. As I understand it, CW gives an allocation (say 100GB) at the beginning of each month and the account is unshaped until that is reached, then you switch over to tier 2 where you are shaped, EXCEPT at night where it is unshaped again. Now I like this but I can see it causing some problems, which, given slightly more complicated nature of your policies might be rather subtle. For one, the incentive this creates works in two directions - at the beginning of each month, i could a) try to manage my downloads (and browsing/streaming!) so they mostly run towards the end of the month when I've breached the free data threshold anyway (thereby remaining unshaped for as large as possible a part of the month) or b) supposing i want to maximise the amount of data downloaded, just start downloading from day one, knowing that being shaped isn't so bad after all and I can still download freely at night. Whichever strategy i follow, there is NEVER any incentive for me to manage my downloads up front to take place during off-peak hours. Surely creating such an incentive would make business sense for an ISP? Now I bet there are some customers who would respond positively towards an account where they can help themselves as well as the ISP by managing their less important downloads to run at night. How could they be helping themselves? By not having downloads running at night count towards their free data usage. How about it, CW? (Given that this translates into less usage of the free data allocation, a fair quid pro quo might be to adjust the free data threshold lower, perhaps even as low as 50% of the current threshold, for example.)
Here are two other suggestions: 1) Instead of having a "hard landing" once your free data allocation is reached, start increasing shaping gradually and 2) Instead of having a monthly free data allocation, have a rolling allocation over a shorter period, e.g. 5 days. As a prospective customer, one thing putting me off is this idea of not being able to run downloads at all during the day once i'm shaped, potentially for weeks at a time as I wait for the next month's free data allocation. For myself, I'm happy if 95% of my "heavy downloads" run at night, but occasionally I want a 200-300 MB file to download during the day, and it would be okay if it runs at less than line speed as well, but having to wait until midnight would not be okay. (A bonus third suggestion: some kind of "turbo button" on your web interface with a small (say 5 GB) allocation each month that I can use exactly for this scenario.)
